DNA gets translated into protein. Genome@home take
naturally existing protein sequences, makes alterations to them
(that should be the same shape as the original protein, which is
the most important thing about a protein), and then reverse
translates these new proteins back into gene sequences; thus the
project generates artificial genomes that, while not existing in
the real world, should produce the same results as the existing
genome (since they should produce proteins with the same shape).

The project hopes that by comparing these artificial genomes to
natural ones, they will be able to gain a better understanding of
genome evolution and how genes and proteins work. Their
homepage lists some of the applications of the project as:

The project gets it's protein information from the Protein
Database (PDB), which can be found at http://ww.pdb.org.
The protien shapes were all found with X-ray crystallography.
Genome@home has a sister project, Folding@home whose goal is
to find the shape of proteins via computer simulation.

The Genome@home project can be found at
http://genomeathome.stanford.edu/.